Hank MayhewNinety Days Dark · Texas Hill Country
Hank MayhewRancher · Texas Hill Country

The lights go out for ninety days. Does your family have a plan for day four?

Most homes are ready for three days. Ninety Days Dark is the plan for the other eighty-seven: what to buy, where the water comes from, and what to do every week until the lights come back on.

Seven volumes · five printable tools

The Ninety Days Dark set: the complete manual, seven volumes, three add-ons, five printable tools and a page open on a phone
worth $297 yours for $37
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Who I am
foto-hank.jpg
The garage. Everything on those shelves has a page in the books.

February 2021, the Texas Hill Country, and a house that stayed warm.

I'm Hank Mayhew. I run a few head of cattle and more chickens than I need on a place west of Austin, and I've lived in this part of Texas my whole life.

In February 2021 the Texas grid went down in the middle of the worst freeze anybody here could remember. Millions of homes went dark. Pipes burst up and down our road. The grocery shelves were bare by the second morning, and the boil-water notice came right after.

Our house stayed warm, the animals were fed and watered, and my wife never once had to melt snow to flush a toilet. Not because we're special. Because ranch life teaches you to keep a few weeks of everything, and to write down what you'll do before you need to do it.

That week also showed me where every plan I'd ever read stops: at day three. Nobody writes down day four, or week six. So I did. These books are the whole ninety days, written plainly, for a regular house with a regular family in it.

$37 once. No subscription. Yours forever. Access the minute you pay.

Where every plan stops

Every kit on the shelf is built for three days. Nobody sells you day four.

Look at the emergency bucket in the store, then look at what ninety days actually asks of a household.

The 72-hour kit
A case of water.
A flashlight.
Three days of food.

and then you are on your own

Ninety Days Dark
Water by the barrel.
Fuel by the week.
A plan to week thirteen.

and a page for every one of them

A short outage is an inconvenience. A long one is a different problem. Food runs out in a certain order. The water you stored gets used for things you never planned. The trash piles up with no truck coming, and the generator drinks more gas than anybody guessed. None of it is hard. It just has to be thought through before the first night, not during it.

So the plan is broken into the thirteen weeks it actually takes, and each week tells you what to eat first, what to check, and what to fix before it turns into a problem.

Day zeroLights outthe first 72 hours
Week 1Eat the fridgethen the freezer
Week 2Into the pantrythe cans begin
Weeks 3–4Settle the routinewater, fuel, trash
Weeks 5–8The long middlehealth and spirits
Weeks 9–12Stretch and swapwhat runs low
Week 13Lights back onand what to restock
The water

Three hundred and sixty gallons, itemized.

Water is the first thing people underestimate and the first thing that runs out. Here is the arithmetic for a family of four, drinking and cooking only.

Volume Three is the whole water chapter: how much, what to store it in, where to put a ton and a half of it, how to find more when it runs low, and the ways to make it safe to drink. Once you see the number on paper, you never look at a case of bottled water the same way again.

Water for four · 90 daysAmount
Per person, per day1 gal
People in the house× 4
Days without the tap× 90
In 55-gallon barrels7 barrels
What it weighs on your floor≈ 3,000 lb
Drinking & cooking360 gal
Cases of 24 bottles≈ 114

Washing, flushing and the animals are not in that number. The books cover where that water comes from too.

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The rules nobody prints on the box

Most of what goes wrong in a long outage is a habit from a short one.

Same generator, same freezer, same toilet. What changes is a handful of things a household does without thinking when the power will be back by supper.

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The generator runs in blocks, not all day. That one habit is most of the fuel arithmetic in Volume Five.
What most homes doWhat ninety days takesWhy it matters
Run the generator all dayIn blocks, two or three a dayThe fridge holds its cold between runs, and the same can of gas goes a lot further.
Generator in the garage, door openOutside, 20 feet from the houseCarbon monoxide has no smell. This one rule is not optional.
Gas in a can until you need itStabilized, dated and rotatedUntreated gasoline goes stale in a few months, right about when you need it.
Open the freezer to see what's leftKeep it shut, list on the doorA full freezer holds about 48 hours closed. Every peek spends some of that.
Flush like alwaysA bucket of used water down the bowlNo pump, no pressure. The toilet still works if you know how to feed it.
Candles in every roomLED lanterns and a headlamp eachCandles start house fires during outages, at the worst possible time.
Bag the trash in the garageA trash plan for thirteen weeksNo pickup for three months is a smell first and a health problem after. It doesn't have to be either.
Buy one 72-hour kitBuy in weeks, eat what you storeA pantry you rotate never goes bad on the shelf, and never costs you twice.

Eight of the rules in Volumes Four and Five. Every one of them works with what is already in your garage.

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Week nine, kitchen table. The card on the door says what to eat and what to check.
The thirteen weeks

Other books stop at week one. This one goes all the way to the morning the lights come back.

Volume Seven is the whole ninety days, week by week: what to eat first, what to check, what to fix, and how to keep a house of people steady once the novelty wears off.

Week one is easy. Week six is where families get tired, and week ten is where supplies run uneven. Those are the chapters nobody else wrote, and they are the reason this set exists.

What you get

Seven volumes. The whole ninety days. About 640 pages.

All of it arrives at once, in PDF. Read it on your phone, or print it and keep it in a binder on the kitchen shelf, which is where it belongs the day the screen goes dark.

Before, and the first days

Day Zero

The first 72 hours · 72 pages

The first hour, the first night and the first three days, in order. What to unplug, what to fill while the tap still runs, what to eat first, who to check on, and what to have done before dark on day one.

The Buy List

For 1, 2 or 4 people · 128 pages

What to buy for ninety days at Costco, Walmart and Tractor Supply, aisle by aisle. Lists for one, two or four people, each in three budgets, and how to build it a little each payday instead of one big bill.

Water

360 gallons for four · 88 pages

How much you need, what to store it in and where to keep it, how to find more when it runs low, and how to make it safe to drink, from the barrel in the garage to the rain off the roof.

Keeping the house running

Bath, Toilet and Trash

The chapter every other book skips · 76 pages

Flushing without a pump, washing up with a gallon, keeping clean when the water heater is cold, and thirteen weeks of trash with no truck coming. Nobody likes to talk about it. Everybody needs it by day five.

Power and Light

Generator, solar, batteries · 96 pages

Picking and running a generator, the fuel arithmetic for ninety days, what solar panels and a battery bank can and cannot carry, and lighting a house safely after dark.

Medicine and First Aid

The house kit · 84 pages

Keeping prescriptions on hand, keeping insulin and other cold medicines cool without a fridge, a first-aid kit built for a house, and knowing what to handle at home and when to go get help.

The long haul
The one nobody else wrote

The Thirteen Weeks

The whole 90 days, week by week · 96 pages

Every week from the first Monday to the morning the lights come back, on a page or two each. What to eat this week and what to save, what to check on the generator, the water and the roof, what usually goes wrong right about now, and how to keep everybody in the house in good spirits when it stops feeling like an adventure.

The other six volumes tell you what to have. This one tells you what to do with it, and when.

And five printable tools

Made for the refrigerator door and the garage wall, not for reading.

Big type, check boxes and room to write. Print them once now and they keep working with the lights off.

One-Page Blackout Plan

Who does what, where everything is, and the first ten steps, on one page the whole family can read.

Fridge Cards

What to eat first, what keeps, and when to throw it out, taped to the fridge and freezer doors.

Pantry Inventory

What you have, how much and when it expires, shelf by shelf, so nothing hides in the back.

Ration Tracker

Thirteen weeks of food and water on one sheet, so you see what will run out before it does.

Generator Fuel Log

Hours run, gallons used, gallons left, and how many more days that buys you.

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Order the plan

The whole ninety days, for less than one bucket of emergency food.

You are paying for Day Zero and The Buy List. The other five volumes and the five printable tools come with them.

What you get for $37

Volume One · Day Zero

The first 72 hours, hour by hour.

$37
Volume Two · The Buy List

Costco, Walmart, Tractor Supply. 1, 2 or 4 people, 3 budgets.

$47
Volume Three · Water

How much, storing it, finding more, making it safe.

$37Included
Volume Four · Bath, Toilet and Trash

The chapter every other book skips.

$27Included
Volume Five · Power and Light

Generator, fuel for 90 days, solar, batteries.

$37Included
Volume Six · Medicine and First Aid

The house kit and the cold medicines.

$25Included
Volume Seven · The Thirteen Weeks

The whole ninety days, week by week.

$47Included
One-Page Blackout Plan

The whole family's plan on one sheet.

$8Included
Fridge Cards

What to eat first, what keeps.

$8Included
Pantry Inventory

Shelf by shelf, with dates.

$8Included
Ration Tracker

Thirteen weeks of food and water.

$8Included
Generator Fuel Log

Gallons used, gallons left, days left.

$8Included
Total value$297
$37
Pay once · yours forever
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7day
guarantee

Seven days, my word on it.

Read it, walk your house with it, fill the first barrel. If it is not what you hoped, reply to your purchase receipt within seven days and every dollar comes back. No forms and no hard questions.

Available at checkout

Three short add‑ons, if you want them.

They are offered as a tick box on the payment page at $9.90 each. You don't need any of them to use the set.

Add-on one

The Grid-Down Kitchen

Ninety days of meals with no refrigerator and mostly no stove, cooked from the pantry in The Buy List, in the order the food should be eaten, with the few hot meals planned around your fuel.

$9.90tick box at checkout
Add-on two

The Freeze Plan

For the outage that comes with ice on the lines. One warm room and how to keep it warm, keeping the pipes from bursting, and what to do the night the ice storm hits. The way we got through February 2021.

$9.90tick box at checkout
Add-on three

The Pet Pantry

Every list forgets the dog. How much your dogs, cats and other animals eat in ninety days, what to buy and where, how to keep it from the mice, how to stretch it safely, and the foods from your own pantry that can kill them.

$9.90tick box at checkout
How it works

From paying to reading Day Zero, about thirty seconds.

You pay $37

Once, through a secure checkout. I never see your card number, and there is nothing to cancel afterward.

Everything opens

On the very next screen, in your members area. Phone, tablet or computer, all twelve files at once.

Print what matters

Your access also goes to your email. Print Day Zero and the tools first, so they are on paper before you ever need them.

Questions

Before you order

What am I actually getting?

Twelve files, open the moment you pay: seven volumes in PDF, about 640 pages in all, and five printable tools. Nothing ships. You log in to your members area and everything is there.

Is this a scare book, or a political one?

Neither. There are no politics in it and no scary stories. A long outage is a practical problem: water, food, fuel, heat, trash. This is a practical plan for it. Most of it will help the next time a storm knocks the power out for a weekend, too.

I don't have a big budget.

The Buy List comes in three budgets for every household size, and it is built to be bought a little at a time over a few months. You don't need a bunker. You need a closet, a corner of the garage and a plan.

I live in town, not on a ranch.

Good. I wrote it for a regular house in town as much as for a place in the country. Wherever something is different for a smaller house or a home with no yard, the book says so.

Do I need a generator?

No. Volume Five helps you decide whether one is worth it for your house, and every other volume works without one.

Is the medicine chapter medical advice?

No. It is what a household should have on hand and know, not a replacement for your doctor or pharmacist. Talk to them about your own prescriptions. The chapter tells you exactly what to ask.

Is this the same as the videos?

No. A video is one idea at a time, and I have to stop when I run out of room. The books are the whole plan in order, with the amounts, the lists and the weeks, so you can work straight from them.

Is this a subscription?

No. One payment of $37 and it is finished. Nobody will charge your card again.

What if it is not for me?

Reply to your purchase receipt within seven days and every dollar comes back. I won't ask you why.

Three days is a kit. Ninety days is a plan.

Most families will never need all of it. The ones who have it written down sleep a little better the next time the lights flicker.

Get the plan — $37

$37 once · Instant access, PDF · 7-day guarantee

Ninety Days Dark · $37 once
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